Search results for ""cambridge scholars publishing""

Continuously in print and translated into multiple languages since it was first published, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty is a classic work of children’s literature that is also an important text in the fields of Victorian studies and animal studies. The new Cambridge Scholars Publishing critical edition reproduces the first edition of 1877, restoring material often abridged in other modern editions. It also includes a critical introduction; contextual material that places the novel in historical context; a chronology of Anna Sewell; and notes on the text that illuminate references to Victorian society and contemporary practices of animal husbandry.

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This book is for the next generation of leaders in business, industry and society, for whom it is important to know where wealth and jobs come from, how the government generates tax revenue and the principles which help society function best. It assumes no prior business knowledge, starting with foundational principles and plunges into important issues in business. It explores questions such as: What is the nature of leadership? What is entrepreneurship? What can financial analysis reveal? How can big data and analytics be used? What strategies are available? Every chapter lists learning objectives allowing the reader to know what to expect. Emphasis boxes throughout the text summarize concepts and provide additional examples. The book assumes no math beyond algebra, but develops quantitative tools through seventy worked equations. Each chapter has a Terms and Concepts section for reference and review. Chapter appendices provide practical information on networking, negotiation, professional dress, consulting, employment, and challenging statistics.

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Photography and Literature in the Twentieth-Century offers an accessible and fresh approach to an object of interdisciplinary research that is currently receiving increased international attention. Providing a broad historical schema, and examining pivotal moments within it, the collection brings together a range of writers and practitioners who help to guide the reader through a historical cross-section of current work in this area. Unlike most existing studies, this volume considers both key literary figures, from Proust to Sebald, and photographic practitioners, from Heartfield to Sekula, in order to give a commanding overview of its subject that is both well-informed and often ground-breaking. With original and accessible essays by acknowledged experts in the field, this is a book that should be of interest not only to students and teachers in departments of literature and photography, but also to those in cultural studies and art history, as well as photographic artists.

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Byron at the Theatre is a collection of essays by a wide spectrum of European scholars, dealing with Byron’s dramas in a variety of ways. It starts with a long and detailed introduction on Byron and Drury Lane, incorporating much recent research done on the riotous and squalid conditions of the theatre in Regency London – conditions which go far towards explaining Byron’s distaste for the idea of theatrical success.There follows a chapter about the influence on Byron of Vittorio Alfieri, a vital subject which has not been written about thoroughly for over a century, and which goes far to explain what motivated Byron’s experiments in classical drama. The main body of the essays discuss Byron’s plays from thematic perspectives, and examine Byron himself as a figure in the dramas of Goethe and Stoppard. There is a chapter on Rudolph Nureyev’s little-known Manfred ballet, and another on Byron himself as a dramatic performer.Byron at the Theatre is a vital book for anyone interested in this much-discussed but little-understood aspect of Byron’s life and work.

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“Black” British Aesthetics Today is a collection of twenty-four exciting critical and theoretical essays exploring current thinking about the hottest artistic, literary, and critical works now being produced by “black” Britons.This book features a number of chapters by the avant-garde “black” British novelists, poets, and artists themselves. It includes, for instance, aesthetic manifestos by Diran Adebayo, Anthony Joseph, Roshini Kempadoo, Sheree Mack, Valerie Mason-John, and SuAndi as well as key essays by globally renowned critics, including Amna Malik, Kobena Mercer, Lauri Ramey, Roy Sommer, and many others. As a compendium, this book represents a powerfully fresh intellectual current of thought. It provides readers with important insights into contemporary “black” aesthetics, and it includes an array of important clarifications initially voiced at the groundbreaking international symposium that took place on April 8, 2006, at Howard University in Washington, D.C., by outstanding new scholars in this burgeoning field of study: e.g., Kevin Etienne-Cummings, Valerie Kaneko Lucas, Michael McMillan, Magdalena Maczynska, Courtney Martin, Jude Okpala, Deirdre Osborne, Koye Oyedeji, Meenakshi Ponnuswami, Sandra Ponzanesi, Andrene M. Taylor, Samera Owusu Tutu, and Tracey Walters.The authors contextualise contemporary “black” British aesthetics in relation to the African, African American, and Postcolonial aesthetic traditions; they explore an exciting array of critical theories, trends of feeling, and lively aesthetic movements thriving today in “black” Britain; and they examine and assess embodied aesthetics at play in a wide range of specific works by today’s most brilliant “black” British novelists, poets, photographers, live performance artists, dramatists, architects, musicians, graphic artists, and cinematographers.

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Negotiating Boundaries: Identities, Sexualities, Diversities is a collection of essays by contributors from—and/or on—societies across the world: Boznia-Herzogovinia, Croatia, France, Iran, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, South and West Africa, the UK and the USA. They are from a range of academic disciples—English Literature, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Literary and Cultural Studies, Modern Languages, Religious Studies, Social Anthropology, Social Policy, Sociology and Theology. This level of diversity has resulted in the most wide-ranging volume ever published in the social sciences and humanities around the concept of "Boundaries". The book is at the cutting edge of intellectual thinking on personal and social "boundaries" applied to such areas as: Art, Genocidal Rape, Identities, God/Godde, Lesbianism, Literature, Men in "Women's Professions", Muslim women in Muslim and non-Muslim countries, Nationalism and Symbolism, Poetry, Religion, Sexual Harassment, Sexuality, Women in Science, Transgenderism, Virginity Testing and War.This range of contributors, locations and topics could have resulted in an incoherent volume with appeal to only a somewhat esoteric readership. However, the skilful use of the concept of "Boundaries" not only gives this book structured coherence, but makes it important reading for a wide range of academics, theorists and researchers in a diversity of disciplines."This is a lively, engaged, nuanced portrayal of the struggles around identity, inequality and domination. Ambitious in its scope – international, interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional in its social focus, Identities, Sexualities, Diversities offers a powerful picture of struggle and the pursuit of change, through the conceptual lens of boundaries. This collection explores the diverse ways boundaries operate, bringing new insights and questions to an established debate. It also, importantly, explores how boundaries can provide bridges. Thus, through its interweaving of theory and empirical analysis, and through its stories of bodies, texts, work, sexual expression, self-presentation, and changing values, Identities, Sexualities, Diversities offers a text that is reflexive, analytically thoughtful, and, significantly, hopeful.”—Davina Cooper, Professor of Law and Political Theory, Director of AHRC Research Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality, Kent Law School, University of Kent“This is a fascinating collection of papers that provides new and important insights into the variety and natures of boundaries around ethnicity, identity and sexuality. Using the complex concept of boundaries the writers explore identities, sexualities and diversities through boundary crossings, contested boundaries, oppressive boundaries and creative, resistant boundaries. This provides a wonderful, coherent engagement with some of the key struggles at the present time over contested territory at personal and global levels. The range of articles ensures that these debates are contextualised in particular societies and cultures providing a rich source of theoretical material that helps our understandings of these complex and crucial issues. The theoretical rigour and fascinating insights presented in this edited book deserves a wide readership from those involved in the social sciences, women’s studies, the humanities and all those interested in transgressing conventional boundaries of scholarship”.—Sheila Scraton, Pro-Vice Chancellor, Director of University Research, Professor of Leisure and Feminist Studies, Leeds Metropolitan University.

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The primary role played by religion in the development of the Spanish nation in the Iberian Peninsula and its subsequent role in the Spanish conquest and colonization of the Americas has been well studied. Similarly, Hispanics around the world and in the United States have been characterized in scholarship and popular opinion by the dimensions of their predominant Catholic faith. To date, neither their diversity of faith nor their ethnic and racial diversity have been adequately addressed, thus contributing to a widely held perception of a monolithic culture with its own Catholic world view, a world view often categorized as obscurantist, mystical and anachronistic. Most important, the role of religion, in all of its diversity and historical evolution, in building Hispanic culture in the United States has not been adequately studied or understood. Today, because a corpus of Hispanic religious thought from across the ages in the United States has been reconstituted and there are scholars dedicated to understanding this thought and the experience it reveals, publication of this present volume has been made possible. The chapters of Recovering Hispanic Religious Thought and Practice in the United States have resulted from the research underwritten by the eponymous Recovery project and initially presented at Recovery conferences in 2004 and 2005. After scholarly debate and re-working of the research papers, the articles contained in this volume were selected. They represent original work on topics rarely addressed before, in recognition that these articles are laying the groundwork on which an entire sub-discipline of Hispanic history, literature and theology will be constructed. The material addressed is so rich and the themes so numerous and promising that their presentation and elaboration here most certainly will entice scholars from other disciplines to broaden their perspectives on Hispanic life in the United States and perhaps to look to these religious and other alternative sources in conducting their own disciplinary research.

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From Camera Lens to Critical Lens: A Collection of Best Essays on Film Adaptation, edited by Rebecca Housel, takes the reader through films by directors like Alfred Hitchcock to examining the relevance of twenty-first century British politics with current film; from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman to author Virginia Woolf; and, examining new theoretical approaches to international film adaptations from China, Japan, Britain, Canada, and France, as well as films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Daughters of the Dust. The collection is derived from the Popular Culture Association (PCA) film-adaptation-area conference papers, researched and written by fourteen diverse scholars from all over the world, who gathered together in San Diego, California in April 2005 to further their research by presenting their ideas on film adaptation, now in full text versions within this exciting new volume. Accessible, engaging and informative, any audience may read and enjoy this edited collection on film adaptation. The volume would also work well for pedagogical purposes, both in and out of the classroom. Such a volume may easily be used in courses for English, film studies, gender studies, women’s studies, fine art, psychology, political science, history, and more. A work of diverse international voices, this collection represents the very best on film adaptation today.

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Why write a book about the stars? Of what use is their study? This book covers this ground with a number of anecdotes arising from the author’s almost 60 years’ experience as a research scientist who has worked with some of the largest telescopes in the world. The text exposes much of what is glossed over in the canned information that the public get and holds nothing back with respect to uncertainties within the subject. People want answers, want somehow to be reassured that someone out there has a handle on things. This book details the basis for our knowledge of the universe, warts and all, and offers important insights as to where the science is going.

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This volume offers a critical yet empathic exploration of the ancient myth of Medea as immortalized by early Greek and Roman dramatists to showcase the tragic forces afoot when relational suffering remains unresolved in the lives of individuals, families and communities. Medea as a tragic figure, whose sense of isolation and betrayal interferes with her ability to form healthy attachments, reveals the human propensity for violence when the agony of unresolved grief turns to vengeance against those we hold most dear. However, metaphorically, her life story as an emblem for existential crisis serves as a psychological touchstone in the lives of early twentieth-century female authors, who struggled to find their rightful place in the world, to resolve the sorrow of unrequited love and devotion, and to reconcile experiences of societal abandonment and neglect as self-discovery.

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This book offers the reader a critical and interdisciplinary introduction to Brazilian history. Combining a didactic approach with insightful historical analysis, it discusses the main political, cultural, and social developments taking place in the Latin American country from 1500 to 2010. The historical narrative leads the reader step by step and in chronological succession to a clear understanding of the country’s three main historical periods: the Colonial Period (1500-1822), the Empire (1822-1889), and the Republic (1889-present). Each phase is treated separately and subdivided according to the political developments and successive regional forces that controlled the nation’s territory throughout the centuries. At the end of each section, an individual chapter discusses the foremost cultural and artistic developments of the period, engaging perspectives on literature, music, and the visual arts, including cinema. Through its multifaceted approach, the book explores economic history, foreign policy, education and social history, as well as literary and artistic history to reveal the multiethnic and culturally diversified nature of Brazil in all its fullness.

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The International Conference on Education, Reflection and Development took place in May 2013 at Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. TThe event was organized by the Educational Sciences Department of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, and brought together participants from various different countries, including Israel, Greece, Turkey, Republic of Moldova, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Romania. The conference gave these scholars the opportunity to discuss a wide range of topics relevant for teacher training and related to didactic research in the context of globalization. It also provided numerous opportunities for the development of projects and international collaborations in the future. Given its wide scope, the conference was attended by a variety of of participants, including academic staff interested, or working, in the field of the social sciences, particularly those concerned with education; teachers from all over the world, looking for new findings, ideas and solutions; researchers in the pedagogical field; and university students, at both the undergraduate and graduate level, looking for research models or for partners in their field of study and interest. This volume brings together several of the best papers presented at the conference, and will be of interest to anyone involved in the various fields of education.

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Mistress, Mother, Muse: An Exploration of the Female in Modern and Contemporary Mediterranean Literature fills a vacuum in comparative literary studies in that it lays the foundations for Mediterraneanism to develop as an area in literary studies.The book is an exploration of aspects of female liminality, including motherhood, sexuality and creativity, in three distinctive Mediterranean cultures, namely Spanish, Greek and Arabic. It adopts myth as an approach to literary analysis, and, thus, introduces a new, ground-breaking method of analysis in literary studies.Mistress, Mother, Muse: An Exploration of the Female in Modern and Contemporary Mediterranean Literature represents a useful reference to students, scholars and academics in the fields of comparative literature, modern Greek literature, Spanish literature, Arabic literature, myth studies, classical Greek literature, and women’s studies.

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This volume, edited from the proceedings of a unique conference held at Sam Houston State University, offers the reader an independent Texas-style celebration of Medieval and Renaissance culture and thought. In the opening article, Richard North reveals some ways in which medieval literature pioneered the modern novel. The following essays, drawing from philosophy, literature, music, art, architecture, history, and linguistics, include studies of the portrayal of women in medieval literature and art; discussions surrounding the hero of Paradise Lost; explorations into the thought of Thomas Aquinas; explications of linguistic puzzles in Beowulf; analyses of Shakespeare’s plays; considerations of renaissance architecture and instrumental music; and an investigation into the influence of rhetoric on musical composition.

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The Australian Institute for Interpreters and Translators runs biennial conferences on topics relevant to the fields. This volume collects presentations from its conference in December 2012. The conference was given the title of “Jubilation” to celebrate 25 years of the Institute’s existence. The papers in this collection are organised around three broad themes: (a) “Innovative Practices and Pedagogies in T and I Training”; (b) “Interpreting in the Community: International Experiences”; (c) “Translation: Challenges, Opportunities and Needs”. The papers are consistent with the long-standing flavour of AUSIT conferences, which combine the practical with the theoretical, reflect practice in Australia and around the world, and provide insights into important questions facing all elements of the profession.

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Contemporary Perspectives and Research on Early Childhood Education is a welcome addition to the field of early childhood education. This book enhances the understanding of different approaches to curriculum and instruction; appropriate assessment strategies; the role of math and science in children’s development; the importance of seeing the whole child and ensuring children develop holistically through play and arts; training effective teachers; and the importance of helping parents to be better supporters of their children. Along with this comprehensive content, the book also contains diverse methodologies including qualitative, quantitative and mixed-method approaches, which will further enrich the reader’s perspective and understanding of a wide range of topics in the field. Thus, this book creates a platform for researchers and practitioners to share and discuss research findings, expertise, and experiences about early childhood education.

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Pupils with Social, Emotional and Behaviour Difficulties (often known as SEBD and EBD) comprise a group of learners who present challenges to their educators and the educational system; often, working with these pupils can be challenging and stressful for their teachers, as well as any professional involved. In England, research concerning the education and learning of pupils with SEBD has progressed considerably in the past three decades, and ‘good practice’ when working with pupils who present these difficulties has been widely investigated. In Cyprus, however, it is not nearly so widely known about and has not been researched to any great extent. This book explores the situation in the Cypriot education system, and begins by expanding the reader’s knowledge on developments on the education of those pupils whose behaviour raises challenges to the educational system and causes concerns to those involved. The book is informed by research which was undertaken by the author in Cyprus, and documents the views of educators and professionals on good practice. It explores the microsystem of a school, and will enrich the knowledge and understanding of those with personal and professional interests in working with these pupils to be ready to accommodate their needs. The book also contributes to a better understanding of the nature of SEBD, especially since the number of students presenting such difficulties in Cypriot primary education requires practitioners to be ready to provide the best practices possible.

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Introduction written by Professor Benjamin B FerenczThis challenging volume examines the jurisprudence of international criminal justice from various points of view. The philosophy of justice may vary from time to time and from nation to nation, depending on prevailing attitudes towards the substantive rules which deal, in one way or another, with cultural norms. In the national and international area, the principles of criminal justice have a key role in examining the scope of the most serious violations of international criminal law. It is on the basis of appropriate judgment that these principles may be accumulated and achieved for the future conduct of man. This volume, therefore, examines the principles and dimensions of the constitutions of various international criminal tribunals/courts, with particular focus on the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). As such, the volume offers a comprehensive evaluation of the rule of law and criminal justice and their legal tasks within the complementarity system of international criminal jurisprudence.The volume emphasises the prosecution and punishment of all those who may successfully escape from the proceedings of national and international criminal courts because of their juridical, political, religious, economic or military power. It demands the implementation of international law of jus cogens. The provisions of the Statute should not be deduced in contradiction to the norms from which no derogation is possible, such as prohibitions governing crimes against humanity, torture, apartheid, rape, war crimes, genocide and aggression. If the value of the task of the Court is to be realised by the majority of states in the international community, the cycle of impunity has to be abolished in the case of all states, including the five permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations.

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This collection asks how we are to address the nuclear question in a post-Cold War world. Rather than a temporary fad, Nuclear Criticism perpetually re-surfaces in theoretical circles. Given the recent events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, the ripple of anti-nuclear sentiment the event created, as well as the discursive maneuvers that took place in the aftermath, we might pause to reflect upon Nuclear Criticism and its place in contemporary scholarship (and society at-large).Scholars who were active in earlier expressions of Nuclear Criticism converse with emergent scholars likewise striving to negotiate the field moving forward. This volume revolves around these dialogic moments of agreement and departure; refusing the silence of complacency, the authors renew this conversation while taking it in exciting new directions. As political paradigms shift and awareness of nuclear issues manifests in alternative forms, the collected essays establish groundwork for future generations caught in a perpetual struggle with legacies of the nuclear.

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Higher education worldwide is operating in a highly volatile context, a consequence of rapid globalisation, constricting funding and intense technological change. These forces challenge assumptions about work, productivity, and international demand for knowledge, skills and resources, igniting needs for highly competent and educated graduates.To remain viable, universities have to build their capacity to respond promptly, positively and wisely to an interlaced combination of “change forces”. One approach is to redesign learning and teaching to enhance subject discipline knowledge and skills. An alternative approach is to develop a learning and teaching framework that builds institutional knowledge and capabilities and connects them to the university’s strategic plan. Taking a longitudinal perspective, covering seven years and three separate research projects, this book focuses on the alternative approach.Producing Pedagogy describes the development and subsequent evaluation of a whole-of-institution approach to pedagogy, based on five associated principles: Sustainability, Engagement, Scholarship, Flexibility, and Contextual Learning. This refereed volume collates insights about the development of the pedagogy using as its case study a regional Australian university.

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This book investigates the practice of family mediation and some of the challenges that may hinder its effective use by marginalised groups in a society. Those challenges include gendered power disparity and family violence, especially towards women, and the discussion extends to how the challenges can be overcome through a practice of evaluative mediation to provide fair outcomes for women. Unlike other contemporary books on mediation, this book not only discusses different theories of power and equity in mediation, it also includes a number of verbatim quotes from different mediation sessions to demonstrate how those theories are operationalised in a real life context.While other contemporary texts on mediation focus on Western style facilitative mediation and its limitations in attaining fair justice for women enduring gendered power disparity and family violence, this text emphasises an evaluative mediation style that is embedded in Eastern social practices. Instead of focusing on gendered power disparity and family violence as limitations on the practice of facilitative mediation, this book details the practice of evaluative mediation which may provide fair justice to women despite the presence of gendered power disparity and family violence in a society.

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This volume highlights the diversity and complexity of cultural dialogue between Russia and Western Europe since the end of the eighteenth century. Part one contains contributions which focus on how these cultures have viewed each other. There are chapters on the myth of Dumas père in Russia, the Russian travelogues of Henry Lansdell, Konstantin Leont’ev’s views on Great Britain and France, and the Russian Symbolists’ construction of a mythical European past. Authors in the second part compare the account of the year 1793 in novels by Hugo, Dickens and Dostoevsky, and the representation of female beauty by Bunin and Proust. Part three looks at ways in which these different cultures have influenced each other. Subjects include echoes of French Impressionism in Soviet painting, John McGahern’s rewriting of a Tolstoy play, and actress Renata Litvinova’s reworking of the story of Marguerite Gauthier from La Dame aux Camélias. The subject of part four is the actual physical encounters between Russia and Western Europe. There are contributions on Karamzin’s experiences in revolutionary Alsace, the impression on Russian national consciousness made by invading French soldiers in 1812, and the experiences of leading French émigrés in inter-war Paris.

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This volume covers a variety of authors and topics related to the New Criticism school of the 1920s–1950s in America. Contributors trace the history of the New Criticism as a movement, consider theoretical and practical aspects of various proponents, and assess the record of subsequent engagement with its tenets. The volume will prove valuable for its renewed concentration not only on the New Critics themselves, but also on the way they and their work have been contextualized, criticized, and valorized by theorists and educators during and after their period of greatest influence, both in the United States and abroad.

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The fourteen interviews in this book form an unprecedented wealth of material on authors’ responses to HIV/AIDS in South Africa and Zimbabwe. They comprise a valuable archive which documents and contextualises the variety of views and opinions of different authors on their often ground-breaking choices in writing about HIV/AIDS. Each author ranks among the first to publish fiction on HIV/AIDS in their respective countries. These interviews are of particular merit as these issues have not been discussed at length with any of the authors before. Collectively they offer a unique range of approaches and opinions in response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in southern Africa. Their significance lies in their specific literary, as well as their broader social, cultural and political perspectives on a disease which continues to spread despite extensive NGO, medical and government intervention. In both South Africa and Zimbabwe, government responses have failed to address the urgent need for new political and economic solutions to the challenge of HIV infection. Responses among the population have varied from widespread silence, shame and fear to political activism and outspoken critiques of government inaction. Writers give voice to this silence and contextualise the disparate reactions amongst diverse peoples.Globally, AIDS killed approximately 2 million in 2008. In 1998, AIDS was the largest killer in southern Africa, nearly double the one million deaths from malaria and eight times the 209,000 deaths from tuberculosis. It has long been the case that of those dying globally of AIDS, the majority live in southern Africa. When the associated social and cultural implications of infection with HIV are considered, fictional representations contribute significantly to our understanding of the impact of HIV/AIDS on communities and individuals, and provide a much-needed basis for ‘humanising’ an epidemic which is unimaginable statistically. It has been said that the feelings and reactions that HIV/AIDS inspires are often ‘too unreal for words,’ and it is this very notion, that certain diseases are taboo, unmentionable, and hardly even named as such, that makes verbalisation of this epidemic a modern imperative.

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This book offers an innovative engagement with the diverse histories of colonial and indigenous medicines. Engagement with different kinds of colonialism and varied indigenous socio-political cultures has led to a wide range of approaches and increasingly distinct traditions of historical writing about colonial and indigenous modes of healing have emerged in the various regions formerly ruled by different colonial powers. The volume offers a much-needed opportunity to explore new conceptual perspectives and encourages critical reflection on how scholars’ research specialisms have influenced their approaches to the history of medicine and healing. The book includes contributions on different geographical regions in Asia, Africa and the Americas and within the varied contexts of Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch and British colonialisms. It deals with issues such as internal colonialism, the plural history of objects, transregional circulation and entanglement, and the historicisation of medical historiography. The chapters in the volume explore the scope for conceptual interaction between authors from diverse disciplines and different regions, highlighting the synergies and thematic commonalities as well as differences and divergences.

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Exploring space: Spatial notions in cultural, literary and language studies falls into two volumes and is the result of the 18th PASE (Polish Association for the Study of English) Conference organized by the English Department of Opole University and held at Kamień Śląski in April 2009. The first volume embraces cultural and literary studies and offers papers on narrative fiction, poetry, theatre and drama, and post-colonial studies. The texts and contexts explored are either British, American or Commonwealth. The second volume refers to English language studies and covers papers on lexicography, general linguistics and rhetoric, discourse studies and translation, second language acquisition/foreign language learning, and the methodology of foreign language teaching. The book aims to offer a comprehensive insight into how the category of space can inform original philological research; thus, it may be of interest to those in search of novel applications of space-related concepts, and to those who wish to acquire an update on current developments in English Studies across Poland (from the Preface).

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Rachel Ritterbusch’s Practical Approaches to Teaching Film is a collection of essays focusing on the use of film in settings ranging from an introductory film class to an upper-division Women’s Studies course. Drawing on their experience in the classroom, contributors to this anthology show how movies can be used to promote critical thinking, create an awareness of the male gaze, challenge dominant ideology, and unmask the constructedness of film. This volume treats a wide variety of film texts, from box-office hits like The Da Vinci Code to underappreciated art films such as Susan Streitfeld’s Female Perversions; from Pépé le Moko and other French classics to more contemporary francophone works like Chaos and Rosetta; from self-reflexive films that interrogate the act of filmmaking itself to those that draw attention to the phallocentric nature of cinematic apparatus. Common to all these essays is the belief that, if used judiciously, film can be a valuable pedagogical tool. Aimed both at those currently teaching film and those wishing to do so, this volume provides practical support in the form of sample syllabi, assignments, and a glossary of film terms.

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This collection of essays, comprised of research first presented at the seventh annual Louisiana Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture, explores one of the most pervasive, vexing, and alluring concepts in the Humanities, that of place. Including essays which encompass a broad range of research fields and methodologies, from Geography to Cybernetics, it presents a cross-section of approaches aimed revealing the complex cultural machinations behind what once may have seemed a static, one-dimensional topic.Investigations into the function of place as a force in contemporary culture inevitably reveal a long history of the interplay between place and cultural product, between 'context' and 'text'. Just as traditional cultures mythologize sacred spaces, so too has Western culture sanctified its own places through its literature. Imagined places such as Faulker’s Yoknapatawpha or Joyce’s Dublin become the focus of conferences and festivals; authors’ homes, birthplaces, and gravesites are transformed into sites of pilgrimage; locales created for television shows and movies become actual businesses catering to a public for whom the line between fantasy and reality is increasingly blurred; and persisting through the great cultural shifts of the past two hundred years is the popular and romantic notion that words, performances, narratives, and even national identities are always in some way an expression of the places in which they are created and set. With the idea of place foregrounded in so much contemporary discourse, this collection promises to enter into an already lively debate and one which, due to its relevance to where we live and how we make sense of our own “places” within them, does not show any signs of flagging.

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The study of altruism and altruistic behavior has caught the attention of social scientists especially in recent years. What motivates individuals to cultivate attitudes and actions that promote the wellbeing of others at the expense of, or at the risk of negative consequences for their own? In our contemporary global society marked by conflict and violence among different sectors of the population in various regions of the world, and wherein religion can be a factor that exacerbates such conflict and violence, harnessing the power of religion towards directions of reconciliation, creativity, and altruistic action, remains a crucial task for humankind. This volume addresses a question especially relevant in our day: do people who profess religious commitment or affiliation in a particular religious community tend to nurture altruistic kinds of attitude and action more than others? Social scientists present results of their empirical studies on Japanese society, as well as on North American, European, Indian, and Thai societies, to focus on this issue and offer insightful reflections on the relationship between religion and society.

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Twenty major German cities have a total of twenty-four theatres specializing, at a high level of sophistication, in presenting light comedy. They have their own typical ambience, principles of artistic management and casting. There are playwrights, actors, directors and designers who work almost exclusively in the genre, called boulevard comedy, developing highly specialised approaches to their work. In almost all cases, the predominantly privately run boulevard comedy theatres in Germany have been able to attract larger audiences than municipal or state theatres in the same cities. The book provides a description and an analysis of this phenomenon, which is unique to Germany. Chapters focus on an analysis of ambience, artistic managers, artistic policies and artistic structures, on major characteristics of the plays presented on the stages of German boulevard comedy theatres, on aspects of translation and the cultural transfer of comedy and laughter and on aspects of production and reception, dealing in turn with actors, directors, media coverage and audiences.

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The book Infinity in Language is a research monograph on the problem of the sublime in language. The authors use methods from cognitive semantics and poetics in order to thoroughly describe how the sublime is used in language. It is a unique attempt to account for one of the most fascinating problems of the human mind: the concept of infinity, and how the experience of infinity and enthusiasm is expressed in language. The book includes new findings in cognitive semantics relating to rhetorical figures such as hyperbole, gradation and accumulation. Cognitive semantics has focused so far on metaphor. This book fills the gap and gives an account of other rhetorical figures. It contains also a historical review of major theories of the sublime by Pseudo-Longinos, Boileau, Burke, Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others, i.e. it spans a period from the first century AD till twentieth century. The authors answer the question how is it possible to present the unpresentable. It is an attempt to outline and develop a model of the rhetoric of the sublime. The model consists of three elements: antimimetic evocation of the unimaginable, a mimesis of emotions and figures of the discourse of the sublime. The books argues in favour of non-cartesian semantics which takes into account not only reason but also emotions, especially very intensive ones. However, the authors also express reservations regarding omnipresent rhetoric of the sublime. They follow those thinkers in the human history who argued against fanaticism and in favour of tolerance and empathy. The book is an original result of an interdisciplinary and international collaboration, lasting many years, between a cognitive scientist and a linguist and literary scholar.

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The book is devoted to linguistic and phonetic analysis of some undescribed and endangered languages. It collects the Proceedings of the international conference on “Undescribed and endangered languages: the preservation of linguistic diversity” held in University of Tuscia (Viterbo, Italy), on September 29, 2005. Papers are by Roberto Ajello (Pisa), Amedeo De Dominicis (Viterbo), Maurizio Gnerre (Napoli), Antonino Melis (N’Djamena).It will appeal to linguists, phoneticians and phonologists as a contribution to the debate it discusses and it will be welcomed by a wide range of students and researchers as an ideal overview of recent works.

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This book brings together several major essays on foundational topics of narrative studies and the theory of fictionality by one of the preeminent figures of postclassical narrative theory. It reexamines and reconceives the role of the author, the status of implied authors, the model for unnatural narrative theory, the nature of narrative, and the ideological implications of narrative forms. It also explores the status of historical characters in fictional texts, the paradoxes of realism, the presence of multiple implied readers, the role of actual readers, and the question of fictionality. In addition, an appendix offers a useful approach for teaching narrative theory. The book includes analyses of works by Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Nabokov, Beckett, Jeanette Winterson, Deborah Eisenberg, and others. Throughout, it argues for a more expansive conception of narrative theory and keen attention to the nature and difference of fiction. This provocative book makes crucial interventions in ongoing critical debates about narrative theory, literary theory, and the theory of fictionality, and is essential reading for all students of narrative.

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Mapping out the Rushdie Republic differs from existing studies on the work of Salman Rushdie by dint of its seriousness of intent and profundity of content. Every major work of the writer is paid due attention as separate articles are devoted to every aspect of his literary persona. As such, the contributions raise pertinent issues and questions that invite the perceptive reader to enter into a meaningful dialogue with the views of a range of formidable academics of national and international repute. A long interview with Timothy Brennan, a notable Rushdie critic, offers further insights, making this a book that designedly stops short of being merely encomiastic about Rushdie’s achievement as an author. The significant act of mapping out the Rushdie republic makes this a must-read for those who find the Rushdie phenomenon an interesting one as part of ongoing debates and discussions.

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This book gathers together some of the most up-to-date thinking in the growing field of innovation in services and more particularly, in financial services. It explores the peculiarities of innovation in financial services firms and surrounding market players, discusses the open nature of the innovation process, and analyses its success factors and its interplay with strategy and performance. This book provides topical insights on the challenges facing the financial industry, such as the convergence with other sectors, and the increasing regulatory burden. By combining multidisciplinary approaches and by selecting a number of cutting-edge research models, theories, empirical findings and practitioners’ insights, it offers unique, contemporary and multidimensional perspectives on innovation for a sector of paramount importance for the running of economies around the world. This book comes at a time of turbulence, uncertainty and within an industry in need of vision and strategic foresight. By synthesizing multiple views from academia and practice, it opens the agenda and contributes to the on-going debate of redefining the multi-polar role of innovation in the financial industry.

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Who Defines Me: Negotiating Identity in Language and Literature is a collection of insightful articles that represent an interdisciplinary study of identity. The articles start from the premise that identity is, and always has been, unstable and mutable; which is to say that identity is constructed and deconstructed and reconstructed – only to be deconstructed and reconstructed again, in turn to be deconstructed and reconstructed (and so on ad infinitum). Time and place are variables. So, too – as Who Defines Me underscores – are ethnicity, religion, politics and power, race and color, nationality, gender, culture, language, and socio-economic status. With all of these variables in mind, Who Defines Me focuses on language and literature as the portal through which identity is explored. The overarching rubrics under which the explorations are conducted are Arabs and Muslims, race identity in America, and language identity.

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Issues of race and ethnicity in Latin America continue to gain a growing amount of academic attention. While themes of ethnic identities, indigeneity, and race relations are commonly examined in our respective disciplines, it is less common to bring together essays from scholars from such a broad variety of disciplines. The papers collected in this volume draw on a wide range of studies from across Latin America, including the examination of ethnohistory, the environment, and culture. They convey a large diversity of perspectives, disciplines, and issues that reflect the richness and complexities of the social processes that encompass the Americas.Taken as a whole, this broad range of studies on ethnohistory, environmental and legal issues, education, and culture advances our understandings of race and ethnicity in Latin America. In the process, these studies incorporate related issues of how historical and political developments in Latin America have, and continue to be, experienced differently based on varying gendered and class perspectives. These studies examine how those speaking from the margins continue to shape and reshape what we know as Latin America.

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This typological overview compares the degree to which different languages have means to give expression to modality (possibility, necessity) without lexical and direct inflectional means. The criterial patterns derive from a variety of languages such as German, English, Chinese, French, Scandinavian, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Polish, and Gothic as well as Old High German. They encompass mainly the auxiliaries HAVE and BE, together with either an infinitival embedding of a full verb linked by the infinitival preposition TO, or other aspectual means. It is demonstrated that what appears as typical covert modal expressions in the Germanic languages, and the Indo-European ones in a wider sense, cannot be seen as a recurrent pattern in non-Indo-European languages. Yet, there are recurrent and plausible forms that allow for generalizations.

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After a period of neglect, the idealist and romantic philosophies that emerged in the wake of Kant’s revolutionary writings have once more become important foci of philosophical interest, especially in relation to the question of the role of religion in human life. By developing and reinterpreting basic Kantian ideas, an array of thinkers including Schelling, Hegel, Friedrich Schlegel, Hölderlin and Novalis transformed the conceptual framework within which the nature of religion could be considered. Furthermore, in doing so they significantly shaped the philosophical perspectives from within which later thinkers such as Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, Wagner and Nietzsche could re-pose the question of religion. This volume explores the spaces opened during this extended period of post-Kantian thinking for a reconsideration of the place of religion within the project of human self-fashioning.

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Centralization and over-professionalization can lead to the disappearance of a critical environment capable of linking the human sciences to the “real world.” The authors of this volume suggest that the humanities need to operate in a concrete cultural environment able to influence procedures on a hic et nunc basis, and that they should not entirely depend on normative criteria whose function is often to hide ignorance behind a pretentious veil of value-neutral objectivity.In sociology, the growth of scientism has fragmented ethical categories and distorted discourse between our inner and outer selves, while philosophy is suffering from an empty professionalism current in many philosophy departments in industrialized and developing countries where boring, ahistorical, and nonpolitical exercises are justified through appeals to false excellence.In all branches of the humanities, absurd evaluation processes foster similar tendencies as they create a sterile atmosphere and prevent interdisciplinarity and creativity. Technicization of theory plays into the hands of technocrats. The authors offer a broad range of approaches and interpretations, reaching from philosophy of education to the re-evaluation of business models for universities.

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Exploring space: Spatial notions in cultural, literary and language studies falls into two volumes and is the result of the 18th PASE (Polish Association for the Study of English) Conference organized by the English Department of Opole University and held at Kamień Śląski in April 2009. The first volume embraces cultural and literary studies and offers papers on narrative fiction, poetry, theatre and drama, and post-colonial studies. The texts and contexts explored are either British, American or Commonwealth. The second volume refers to English language studies and covers papers on lexicography, general linguistics and rhetoric, discourse studies and translation, second language acquisition/foreign language learning, and the methodology of foreign language teaching. The book aims to offer a comprehensive insight into how the category of space can inform original philological research; thus, it may be of interest to those in search of novel applications of space-related concepts, and to those who wish to acquire an update on current developments in English Studies across Poland (from the Preface).

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This book presents a collection of articles that put forward original research and significant insight regarding several key issues related to knowledge and language in Middle Eastern societies. The aspects studied include: the role of knowledge and language in affirming and negating political agendas and self-identities within areas of conflict and tension; ideas regarding the usefulness and interaction of religious and secular knowledge; and the attributes that render knowledge and language, especially that which is believed to be of divine origin, outstanding and worthy of admiration. The selection of studies has been purposefully diverse to include a variety of languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew and Persian, within multiple traditions, including Hellenism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, while focussing on a range of periods, from the classical to the mediaeval to the modern, and examining a range of issues, such as methods of analysing and interpreting Persian, Turkish and Arabic literature, literary and other attributes of the Bible and the Qur’an, diglossic languages, the Turkish modernisation project, Turkish-Kurdish tensions, Andalusian music, Azerbaijani politics, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.By underlining the substantial commonalities that exist between such seemingly different fields of research, the book highlights the idea—increasingly on the wane in departments of Middle Eastern Studies across many universities—that a shared area of study, viz. the Middle East, naturally and inherently entails a shared cultural, historical, and sociological milieu. It suggests that academics who engage in different branches of research related to this area should—rather than focussing singly on their own field—avail substantially and meaningfully of one another’s scholarship, learn from each other’s methodologies, and collectively build upon a body of knowledge that should never be seen as dissociated.

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Formal Studies in Slavic Linguistics is a collection of selected papers presented at the Graduate Colloquia on Slavic Linguistics held at the Ohio State University, and as such presents current research of young scholars from top European and American universities. The present volume is a continuation of Issues in Slavic Syntax and Semantics (2008). Unlike its predecessor, Formal Studies in Slavic Linguistics exclusively focuses on synchronic analyses of challenging phenomena in various Slavic languages and expands its theoretical scope to include essays in virtually all areas of theoretical linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. The papers in this volume discuss consonant deletion in Russian and phonetic patterns in Russian loan words, properties of Slovenian clitics and the constructions involving the prefix na- in Slovenian, subjunctive clauses in Polish, Serbo-Croatian multiple wh questions, negative-contrastive ellipsis and impersonal constructions in Russian. The formal frameworks employed in the analyses of these phenomena range from optimality theory to minimalism. Given its broad empirical and theoretical scope, Formal Studies in Slavic Linguistics is bound to be of interest to Slavic scholars and general linguists alike.

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In Haiku, the Gentle Art of Disappearing, a renowned Irish poet shows us how haiku may be used as a powerful tool for spiritual interpenetration. This implies that we divest ourselves of the ever-chattering mind, shed the voracious ego and enjoy momentary glimpses of unity with natural phenomena. In the companion volume, Haiku Enlightenment, he further explores these thoroughly delightful experiences and invites us to disappear! Haiku is dynamically focussed on the present, from season to season, from day to day, from hour to hour, from second to second. But how illusory, how fleeting is that present moment? How caught up is it with the past, with the future? Can we stop its flow? Are there more ways than one of experiencing its essence? If we experience a moment intensely enough, might we disappear? Surprises await those readers who may have considered haiku to be nothing more than an innocuous three-line poem.A renowned poet shares his experience of haiku and its potential to surprise us again and again into a sudden awakening and thus to a deeper sense of what it is to be truly alive. His remarkably refreshing insights have delighted confreres around the world.

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This book represents the physical outcome of the symposium “Academic Voices in Contrast”, organised at the University of Bergen, Norway, in May 2006. The symposium, focusing on recent research within the field of academic discourse, was initiated and organised by the KIAP project (Cultural Identity in Academic Prose; see www.uib.no/kiap/). In this project, a special focus has been put on the study of the voice(s) of the academic author, in the doubly contrastive perspective of language and discipline. A narrow selection of distinguished scholars were invited to participate at the symposium. They were asked to address issues related to “traditional” linguistic versus contextual approaches or to interlingual and interdisciplinary similarities and differences in academic discourse. By the papers of the following, the symposium and the present book constitute a clear advancement of the research on academic discourse: M. A. A. Ariza, L. Berge, M. Bondi, S. V. Bonn, S. Carter-Thomas, T. Dahl, K. Fløttum, A. M. Gjesdal, F. Grossmann, K. Hyland, T. Kinn, L. Lundquist, A. Mauranen, M. Pabón, E. Rowley-Jolivet, F. Salager-Meyer, P. Shaw, J. M. Swales, J.L. Tønnesson, E. T. Vold, F. Wirth.

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In Permanent Transit: Discourses and Maps of the Intercultural Experience builds interdisciplinary approaches to the study of migrations, traffics, globalisation, communication, regulations, arts, literature, and other intercultural processes, in the context of past and present times. The book offers a convergence of perspectives, combining conceptual and empirical work by sociologists, anthropologists, historians, linguists, educators, lawyers, media specialists, and literary studies writers, in their shared attempt to understand the many routes of the intercultural experience.This Permanent Transit generates an overlapping of cultures, characteristic of a site of cultural translation. In their incessant creation of uncertainties, these pages also produce new hypotheses, theories and explanations, while pushing limits, bringing about epistemological changes, and opening new spaces for independent discussion and research.The potential for change is located at peripheries marked by hybridity, where the ‘new arrivals’ and the ‘excluded’ – like this book and many of its contributors – are able to use subversion to undermine the strategies of the powerful, regardless of who they are. Cultural translation – both as Judith Butler’s ‘return of the excluded’ and as Homi Bhabha’s hybridity – is a major force of contemporary democracy, also in the academic field.

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Winner of the 2013 Outstanding Qualitative Book Award by the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.Signs of Hope tells the story of a narrative inquiry with three deafhearing families. For many of us, deafness represents loss and silence. For others, being deaf is a genetic quirk; an opportunity for learning, spiritual adventure and reward. For yet others, it is the most natural thing in the world; a connection to a genealogical layer of signing ancestors and the continuation of a culture. Amid the noise of mainstream, medical and educational discourses of deafness, here are family voices demanding to be heard – whether spoken or signed – that challenge audiological and surgical intervention, that call for scrutiny and critique of ‘inclusive’ deaf-related pedagogical practices, that rail against marginalisation of members of minority cultures. Over four years, Donna West has recorded the stories of three families who wish to counter and resist what they see as damaging misconceptions and discriminatory constructions of deafness and deafhearing family life. Here, spaces are created that respect and acknowledge human beings – adults, children, deaf, hearing – as storytellers. The poetic and performative narratives at the heart of this book reveal not only the ways in which hurtful definitions of, and discrimination towards, deaf people and signing deafhearing families is destabilised, but also the ways in which celebration of deaf culture and sign language are affirming and vital for healthy family life.

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Drawing on philosophy, theology and psychoanalysis as well as on literary criticism, this collection of essays explores a range of fantasy texts with particular attention to the various ways in which they seek to deal with the reality of death. The essays uncover some fascinating links, and indeed tensions, between the writers discussed.

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